Rail hunting offers challenge for any wingshooter

David Tyte of Houston and Toby, a chocolate lab, work a Matagorda County saltmarsh for rails, one of the least-pursued game birds in the state.

Photo By Shannon Tompkins

Rails, such as this clapper rail, prefer to run and hide in marsh grass instead of flushing ahead of hunters and dogs. They are the wetlands equivalent of blue quail.

Photo By Shannon Tompkins

A close-working retriever that can flush tight-holding rails and find downed birds in thick cover is a near necessity when hunting the species in coastal marshes.

We were uncasing shotguns, sticking a box or so of low-brass shotshells and a bottle or two of water in pockets of bird belts and shooting vests, pausing to wipe the sweat from our faces, when Todd Steele offered some well-considered advice.

We moved out, abreast - the four of us and Steele's chocolate lab, Toby - flanking the potentially snake-holding levee and watching for telltale movement of game birds in the thick, low grass spreading over broad acres before us as Toby sniffed and rooted and circled.

It could have been a scene straight out of a walk-'em-up Texas quail hunt.

But this hunt on a steaming September morning had nothing to do with quail.

The landscape before us was a muddy mosaic of Matagorda County saltmarsh carpeted with oystergrass and glasswort and veined with bayous, canals and feeder drains.

That stems from the birds' habitat and behavior, both of which tend to discourage all but the most determined wingshooters.

Texas is home to five species of rails - clapper, king, sora, Virginia, black and yellow - and while they differ slightly in size of body and bills (clapper and king are largest with long, curved bills; the others are slightly smaller with shorter bills), they share similar body shape and behavior.

Rails are birds of the marsh, where the long-legged "marsh hens" make their living by stalking through the low, thick cover, feeding almost exclusively on invertebrates - fiddler crabs, crawfish, snails, marine worms and such.

Except when migrating, rails spend all their time on the ground, seldom flying except in short hops across ditches and bayous.

They are remarkably designed for life on the ground in the low, thickly vegetated marsh.

Propelled by long, thin, webless toes at the end of long legs attached to muscular thighs, rails can move with amazing speed.

Also, their bodies are uniquely equipped for squeezing through the thick cover. Rails have a hinged rib system that allows them to laterally compress their bodies to fit through narrow openings. Some folks claim the term "skinny as a rail" comes from the birds' ability to compress their bodies.

Rails, one of the bird world's most secretive creatures, prefer living in the shadows of the marsh, seldom showing themselves except along the edges of waterways. But they often are noisy creatures, and their staccato calls are heard much more often than their brownish bodies are seen.

As rails are homebodies, hunting them involves going to them. And that's tough in Texas. It means walking the marsh, struggling through thick stands of cordgrass, slogging through boot-sucking mud, and wading the drains and ditches, hoping to flush a rail and get a shot.

This can be brutally physically demanding, especially during a September rail season that is set to coincide with the teal-only hunting season and sees invariably hot and humid weather. It's only slightly better during the cooler "fall" rail season, which this year runs from Nov. 5-Dec. 28.

Not playing along

And rails aren't exactly cooperative when hunted. The birds much prefer running and hiding to flushing and flying. They are amazingly adept at seemingly vanishing into low cover, holding tight and refusing to flush even as hunters walk within inches of the invisible birds.

For this reason, it's almost mandatory that rail hunters have a good dog along for the effort. Close-working labs are great for this job, as they often will be able to ferret a tight-holding rail from its hide, forcing it to flush and giving the hunter a shot.

And if the hunter is able to connect - rails are not particularly strong fliers but can be deceptively tough targets as they fly low and tend to suddenly dive back into the marsh grass - a good dog can quickly find a downed bird a hunter might have difficulty locating.

Our rail rally this past weekend was fairly typical. We walked/slogged the oystergrass and glasswort flats along edges of waterways on the sprawling tract of saltmarsh leased by Thunderbird Hunting Club, with club principal Steele and members Rob Sawyer and David Tyte watching for glimpses of the secretive birds.

Invariably upon seeing the hunters, rails would flatten and run, squirting through the marsh grass like mercury. The hunters would chase them, struggling over the muddy, uneven terrain, trying to catch up and force the birds to flush.

Rail hunting, to put it in terms to which many Texas wingshooters can relate, is like hunting blue quail (notorious for running instead of flushing) in calf-deep mud. It is not for the weak of heart, lungs or legs. Nor is it for anyone who minds getting hot, sweaty and muddy.

Few Texas hunters seem to find this appealing. So few Texans hunt rails that it's hard to get anything close to reliable figures on how many pursue the birds. The best guesses are that as few as 300 and as many as 2,000 Texans make at least one rail hunt over the 70-day season.

Rail hunting is much more popular in the upper Midwest, Florida and mid-Atlantic coastal states. There is a reason: In those states, rail hunting is done by boat.

On the Atlantic Coast, where tide levels vary much more than on the Gulf Coast, rails are hunted when high tides flood the marsh and push the birds onto slivers of high ground. Usually, a pair of hunters - one poling the boat from the rear, the other in the bow, shooting - pole through the flooded marsh, flushing rails from their high-water hides. It's quite more laid-back and a whole lot less physical than being afoot and busting trail through a Texas coastal marsh, then having to try running down a sprinting rail skilled in dodging or hiding from coyotes, marsh harriers and other fanged or clawed predators.

Populations of sora (the most populous and widespread rail species), Virginia and clapper rails are strong and stable. King rails, which depend on freshwater marshes, have seen a drop in numbers over the past few decades, with that decline tied directly to the loss of those freshwater marshes.

Black and yellow rails - small birds that have low populations, are particularly secretive (even for rails) and are seldom encountered - are protected from hunting.

The health of populations of huntable rail species and the light hunting pressure on them are reflected in the liberal daily bag limits for the birds. Hunters in Texas are allowed to take as many as 15 large (clapper, king) rails per day and as many as 25 small (sora, Virginia) rails per day.

Good eats

Few rail hunters take anything near that number - federal estimates for the 2010 season indicate 27,100 rail hunters nationwide took 47,700 rails. But the hunters who do manage to collect a handful of these wonderfully different birds have the makings of a great meal. Rails have a very distinctive taste - somewhere between dove and quail with a hint of their marsh home. Grilled or broiled, medium rare, they are a treat.

And despite the physical effort involved, rail hunting is a treat, too. It's an opportunity to directly connect with one of the state's most vibrant ecosystems, see and smell and feel the marsh, and witness the amazing variety of life that thrives in them.